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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Easter Leftover Makeovers

Holiday meals are my favorite, but growing up in a small family, we always had tons of leftovers. My mom is the queen of soup and turkey sandwiches will always be a favorite of mine. Since Mike and I hosted Easter on Sunday for his cousin and her fiance, of course we had tons of leftovers. So, I came up with a breakfast, lunch, and dinner leftover makeover idea for our meal. For reference, we had a maple brown sugar crockpot ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, rolls (obviously all of those were gone haha), and french silk pie.

For breakfast, I always eat English muffins, sometimes with an egg. I decided to sauté up a piece of ham in the same pan as my egg, and added a piece of cheese on top to make a delicious and easy breakfast sandwich.

For lunch, I made ham salad. I don't like ham salads with pureed ham in the food processor, so I decided to just cube mine. To be honest, I'm usually really bad at measuring out ham salad, but here is the closest I have to a recipe - haha: 1 thick-cut slice or about 1 cup cubed ham, 1/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup yellow mustard, 1/4 cup relish, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne, and pepper to taste.

Dinner was probably my favorite. Now that I had used almost all of the leftover ham for breakfast and lunch, it was time to makeover the side dishes. I love pasta and have always wanted to try making my own. Gnocchi with our leftover mashed potatoes sounded perfect! To make enough for 3-4 people, I used two cups of leftover mashed potatoes, 1 cup of flour, 1 egg, and a teaspoon of salt. I made an egg volcano, mixed everything together on the counter, rolled it out, cut the gnocchi into bite-sized pieces, and put them in a container with plenty of flour to keep everything from sticking.

After I froze them for a few hours, I shook off all of the excess flour, cooked them in salted boiling water for 4 minutes, and served them with tomato sauce. Our mashed potatoes were originally made with cream cheese, so they were especially creamy and great for these gnocchi. The side of green beans and corn were also leftovers that I sauteed with a recipe from my favorite cookbook (which is basically a clove of crushed garlic and a couple tablespoons of olive oil) in a skillet on medium for 8 to 10 minutes.

As for the dessert, obviously pie is delicious the next day, so need to change it. My only suggestion if you're making a cream pie and you think you might not eat it all in one sitting, is to not cover the pie with cream, but instead put cream on each slice so that it doesn't start to melt on the pie overnight. Instead, you can just put it in a container and rewhip it the next day!

There you have it! What did y'all have for Easter dinner? Any great leftover makeover ideas?